Since the Han Dynasty, tea has changed its name various times. Examples of names are cha, chi, and Ming. It was during this time in China when tea was being made for medicinal purposes. Interesting to the story, tea is made by boiling water and adding herbs to it. Surprisingly, Chinese people did not like drinking hot water even though they liked hot tea. It was because of tea’s medicinal purposes that tea became a popular beverage to Chinese culture. Some of its purposes included soothing the throat, the stomach, and even making calming people down. Hot tea even became a social custom where they would bring tea to their neighbors, visitors, or other fellow guests. As the origin of the tea story continues, China started exporting tea across the world. At first, they used their special tea bricks to distribute to the Koreas. Quite frankly, it was only a matter of time, about a thousand years, when tea was transported into Portugal, then into France and Holland. It was at that point when tea was then exported all across Europe in the mid 1600s. Tea was even exported into Britain and New Amsterdam. Quite knowingly, the British and New England colonies were very interested in China’s tea, and through the 18th century into the 1830s, the East India Company in China kept trading tea and interestingly, the price dropped. By that point tea exports reached 30 million pounds per year. It is also known that there is way more to the story behind how tea was exported across the world. According to Chinese History, tea was imported into Russia and actually brought into a 1618 court case. Furthermore, by the 1880s, Russia gave tea to the Mongols and Tibetans, and this led to new tea styles. For instance, Tibetans crushed tea bricks and poured leaves on it and while boiling water, they poured in the tea and added milk to it. It is also possible that it is only in the Russian where drinking non-bitter tea is normalized.
Works Cited
Thavapalakumar, M. 2020. 2019 tea target for set for 2021. The Morning. Retrieved from https://www.themorning.lk/2019-tea-target-set-for-2021/
Towler. 2010.”A brief history of tea in China.” https://docs.tdh.bergbuilds.domains/fys/towler-2010-chadao-origins.pdf
Wilkinson. 2018. Tea History. https://docs.tdh.bergbuilds.domains/fys/wilkinson-2018-tea-history.pdf
